Try to hold down the left mouse button on the Back button to open the history of the current tab.
That will allow you to select older history entries that might bring you back.

Start Firefox in Safe Mode to check if one of the extensions (Firefox/Tools > Add-ons > Extensions) or if hardware acceleration is causing the problem (switch to the DEFAULT theme: Firefox/Tools > Add-ons > Appearance).

• Do NOT click the Reset button on the Safe Mode start window or otherwise make changes.

• https://support.mozilla.org/kb/Safe+Mode
• https://support.mozilla.org/kb/Troubleshooting+extensions+and+themes

Having the same problem. Where ask to hold the back button down for the history, the drop down window has my current page listed to the bottom of the window over and over, if I click the last one it simply reload the page I'm on. each time it does go back to the last page, I have no idea what I did to make it work. It's just a lot of time wasted. it's so bad that some time all I can do is restart from the history tab key on the tab line.

Hi hywayslv, this could indicate that the page is reloading itself over and over, filling up the tab history. Annoying -- and fortunately rare.

When you have a problem with one particular site, a good "first thing to try" is clearing your Firefox cache and deleting your saved cookies for the site.

(1) Bypass Firefox's Cache

Use Ctrl+Shift+r (or on Mac Command+Shift+r) to reload the page fresh from the server.

Alternately, you also can clear Firefox's cache completely using:

(WIN) orange Firefox button (or Tools menu) > Options > Advanced
(MAC) Firefox menu > Preferences > Advanced

On the Network mini-tab > Cached Web Content : "Clear Now"

If you have a large hard drive, this might take a few minutes.

(2) Remove the site's cookies (save any pending work first). While viewing a page on the site:

• right-click and choose View Page Info > Security > "View Cookies"
• Tools menu > Page Info > Security > "View Cookies"

In the dialog that opens, you can remove the site's cookies individually.

Then try reloading the page. Does that help?

I went through all the steps, and it would work for a few minutes, then you could watch the little green arrow start spinning, and re-spinning. I repeated the steps twice, there are several different web pages that do this including YouTube, Dailymotion and my home page, a television station and it will do it also, sorry

this all started with the last update vs21

I forgot to ask, did you follow cor-el's suggestion to try Firefox's Safe Mode? That will disable your extensions, so if one of them is causing the problem, it should stop. If Safe Mode behaves the same, we can rule out extensions as a potential problem.

yes I did and it still did it, I would go back to my stand by vs3.6 but so many things don't work with it anymore.

Hi hywayslv, what OS are you running?

Does it make any difference if you block reloads in the Options/Preferences dialog:

(WIN) orange Firefox button (or Tools menu) > Options > Advanced
(MAC) Firefox menu > Preferences > Advanced

On the "General" mini-tab > "Warn me when websites try to redirect or reload the page"

Have you considered the Reset option? Refresh Firefox - reset add-ons and settings

If you need to roll back, version 20 would involve a lot fewer security vulnerabilities than version 3.6.28. If you feel compelled and understand the security issue, see this article: Install an older version of Firefox.

jscher2000, Got the tools > options > advanced > general-small tab,> warn me when websites try to redirect or reload the page, check button to work after many attempts, the back button is now working fine. THANKS MUCH

Hi hywayslv, thank you for reporting back!

On another forum, it was reported that some pages reload incessantly if you are using automatic or permanent private browsing mode. Not sure whether that is relevant for anyone who posted in this thread. Can't return to previous page! • mozillaZine Forums.